Do a digital declutter
Digital clutter is a huge but rarely thought of productivity-killer and time suck. What apps you have on your home screen, what apps send you notifications, and what apps are running in the background when you turn on your phone, all affect how you interact with your phone and how often you pay attention to what. Then there are all those promotional emails that get sent daily to your inbox that just keep piling up.
Just like physical clutter in our homes, digital clutter can create stress because you feel like you’re being bogged down by a bunch of things that are wasting your time and energy.
If you want to clean up your phone from unnecessary distractions, here are some steps you can take:
1) Unsubscribe from everything you never read – The first step towards a Zen-like digital existence involves saying goodbye to any email subscriptions that you don’t find of interest or value. This means less stuff clogging up your inbox in the future, and less clearing out of your inbox. Scan your inbox for any e-newsletters that you never read and hit the unsubscribe link on them. Be ruthless.
2) Uninstall any apps you don’t need – Look at all the apps on your phone and uninstall any you don’t need or use. Not only will this give you more storage space and improve the speed of your phone, but it will make your phone less busy looking and will allow you to more easily find the apps you do use.
3) Turn off non-essential notifications on your smartphone – Go through the notifications settings on every app you use and ensure that you are receiving only the absolutely essential ones. This probably means turning off a lot of social media notifications. These notifications interrupt your work flow and thought process, and getting rid of them will help you focus better on the task at hand. Not to mention you’ll save a lot of your phone battery with less notification processing.
4) Clean up your web browser. – Do you have a hundred browser tabs open? No, just me? In any case, going through and closing out tabs that you are no longer looking at will make a big difference in your browser speed. You can also clear your browsing history and delete your cookies.